In this talk, Elisa Giardina Papa outlined the theoretical and archival research which informs two of her video installations, Technology of Care and Cleaning Emotional Data. Presenting images, she collected while working as a “data cleaner” for various AI systems, she addressed the ways in which machines are disciplined and trained to see. Tracing, bounding-boxing, and labeling are key operations used to teach machines to separate Data from data, signal from noise, and orderly things from disorderly ones. They are also, Giardina Papa argues, the onto-epistemological operations of modern imperial and colonial conquest. Ultimately, this was an invitation to reflect on modes of seeing otherwise which remain radically unruly, irreducible, and incomputable.
Elisa Giardina Papa focuses on research-based art, seeking forms of knowledge and desire that have been lost or forgotten, disqualified, and rendered nonsensical by hegemonic demands for order and legibility. Her work has been exhibited and screened at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (The Milk of Dreams), the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA’s Modern Mondays), the Whitney Museum (Sunrise/Sunset Commission), Martin-Gropius-Bau, ICA London, Vienna Secession, HKW Berlin (Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt), Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2018, 6th Buenos Aires Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento, XVI Quadriennale di Roma, Rhizome (Download Commission), Flaherty NYC, UnionDocs, BFI London Film Festival, Center for Contemporary Art Tashkent, Uzbekistan, M+ Hong Kong, among others.
The view lecture is available for viewing here: